Lacquer

East Asian lacquer is the sap of the lacquer tree, and its main component is urushiol. Raw lacquer gives most people an allergic rash on contact. It does not dry by evaporation: at the right temperature and humidity it oxidizes and polymerizes into a hard film. The earliest known Chinese lacquerware is a red wooden bowl from a Hemudu culture site in Zhejiang, made around 5000 to 4000 BC. In Taiwan, lacquer took root under Japanese rule. Yamanaka Tadasu, a Japanese lacquer artist who came to Taiwan in 1916, set up a lacquerware workshop in Taichung and developed a style called Hōrai-nuri, taking Taiwan's fruit and scenery as its subjects; he also ran the craft training school founded in Taichung in 1928, where Taiwanese lacquer artists such as Wang Ching-shuang studied. The permanent exhibition at the Taipei Contemporary Craft and Design branch begins with this local lacquer of the 1920s and goes on to Yen Shui-long's craft design, the revival of Indigenous cultures, and community crafts.

Look at the light reflected across a surface at an angle, then find an edge or a worn spot: can you see layers of a different colour underneath?

How many layers of lacquer might lie hidden beneath this sheen?